Ann Cleeves - Blue Lightning

‘She was here for lunch,’ John Fowler said. ‘She served it and cleared it up. I haven’t seen her since then.’

‘Did anyone see her after lunch?’

Nobody answered. ‘This is a small island,’ Rhona said. ‘There are few places to hide. It seems she walked away from the field centre at some point in the afternoon. It didn’t look as if she drove. Surely somebody saw her. Who was outside?’ She sounded like a teacher trying to elicit a response from a particularly unresponsive class.

Still there was no reply. Dougie’s phone began to ring. The call was from one of the Bristol birders, a member of the rarities committee.

‘Switch that off!’ Rhona snapped at him without looking round. She pulled up a chair and sat at the table. It was Perez’s turn.

‘We have to decide how to proceed from here,’ Perez said. ‘The boat will go tomorrow. We’ve agreed that Poppy should be on it. Her mother will be meeting her in Grutness to take her home and we’ll know where she is if we need to talk to her again. Was anyone else planning to leave?’

‘I’m contracted to be here until the middle of November,’ Ben said. ‘Someone should carry on ringing throughout the migration season. I’d like to prepare the annual report as Angela’s not here to do it.’

‘I want to stay,’ Dougie said. He still resented not being allowed to take the call from the birding celebrity. The wind was light south-easterly. Who knew what other vagrants might turn up? American birds were all very well, but they weren’t as exciting as the rarities from the east. Anyone with enough money could go to the US to see trumpeter swan. Birds from Siberia weren’t so easy to track down on their breeding grounds. ‘And there’ll be loads of birdwatchers turning up tomorrow.’

‘We should decide how we’re going to manage that.’ Perez looked at Rhona.

‘You can’t stop them coming!’ Dougie said. ‘They’ll come anyway. If you stop the flights they’ll charter boats.’

‘We can’t allow them to get in the way of the investigation,’ Rhona said.

‘They won’t! I’ll bring them up to Golden Water and then back to the airstrip. They don’t need to stay overnight.’

Rhona looked at Perez: ‘Would that work?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ He paused. ‘The press might be more troublesome.’

‘Don’t worry about the press,’ she said. ‘I’ll cope with them. It’ll be best to get them all in together and give them the same story.’

She’d enjoy dealing with the media, Dougie thought.

‘There must be somewhere we can hold a press conference. The community hall, perhaps?’

Perez nodded.

‘I was hoping we could go out on the boat,’ Sarah Fowler said. Still her hands moved in her lap. ‘We’re booked to stay for another week, but I’m scared now. Two murders. Two women. I want to go home.’

‘I can’t keep you here,’ Perez said. ‘But it would make life easier for me if you stuck to your original plan. We’ll need to talk to everyone again in the light of this afternoon’s discovery. Another police officer came in on the plane this afternoon. He’ll be staying here at the lighthouse. I’m sure you’ll be quite safe.’

‘Of course you’ll be safe,’ Rhona said. ‘I’ll be staying here too.’ As if she would be far more effective than Perez’s colleague at preventing another outrage.

The Fowlers looked at each other. Dougie thought it would take more courage to stand up to the Fiscal and insist on going than to decide to stick it out. Sarah put her hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Please, I don’t think I can stand it here any longer.’

Fowler frowned. Dougie thought he was torn between meeting his wife’s request and doing what he’d see as his duty. ‘Just a few more days,’ he said. ‘If the inspector thinks it’ll help.’

Sarah looked at her husband and saw that she was defeated ‘OK. We’ll stay.’

‘Who’ll do the cooking?’ Dougie asked.

For the first time that evening Perez smiled. ‘I’ll ask someone from the island to help out. We’ll make sure that you’re fed.’ He turned to Hugh. ‘What about you? Do you need to get home?’

The trademark grin had already returned. ‘I want to stay until this is all over. Until the killer’s caught. Of course.’

In Springfield, Mary and Fran waited for news. Fran thought: Throughout history, it’s been the women who’ve waited. The men have it easy. They see the action and they know what’s happening. The women sit, imagine disaster, and peer through gaps in the curtained windows for the men to return. Then she thought she was being ridiculously melodramatic. She was hardly the French Lieutenant’s Woman, staring out from the end of the pier. These days there were mobile phones. She could always phone Perez and ask him what was going on. Waiting would have been more bearable if she could have had a proper drink. She was drowning in tea. Perhaps because of James’s puritan influence, Mary seemed to think alcohol was sinful and corrupting, especially for women. If James took a dram she considered that almost medicinal, but she never joined him. Fran had bought a bottle of wine in the shop when she was last there, to have with dinner when they all got together. It seemed that was unlikely to happen in the near future, and the bottle was still in her room, tempting her. It had a screw top. She wouldn’t even have to steal a corkscrew from the kitchen. Already, in her head, she was forming this as an amusing story to tell her London friends. They’d be in a bar somewhere and she’d be talking about her first visit to Fair Isle and the religious in-laws, about sneaking into her bedroom, drinking the wine straight from the bottle. She was a good storyteller. She’d have them in stitches.

She phoned Cassie as she did every evening. Duncan had taken the girl to Whalsay with him on business and Fran sensed she’d been bored. ‘When are you coming home?’ Cassie demanded. ‘Jimmy promised to take me swimming.’

‘Just a couple of days. I promise. Not long now. Get Dad to invite Jenny to play tomorrow.’ Jenny was Cassie’s new best friend.

Fran had just replaced the receiver when Big James arrived home. She knew Perez found it hard to get on with his father. They’d discussed the relationship: parents and how to survive them. But Fran thought James was a sweetie. He’d been pleasant enough to her at least. When Perez was busy he’d walked round the croft with her, explained the crops he was growing, told her how they worked the sheep. It had seemed to her that he was a man who enjoyed the company of women.

Now she thought he looked very tired and quite old. She’d always considered him a strong man, muscular and fit, but this evening she saw the lines on the back of his hands and the slackness in the skin around his eyes and his jaw.

‘I don’t know how Jimmy does that work,’ he said. ‘It would be too much of a strain for me.’ He sat in his usual chair by the fire and pulled off his boots.

‘The plane got in all right?’ Mary asked.

‘No problem at all. It was the new pilot, but he knew what he was doing.’ James got to his feet and poured himself a glass of whisky. He lifted the bottle towards Fran. ‘Will you take a dram?’ A sign that these were indeed unusual times.

She hesitated for a moment and then she nodded. He poured her a measure that was as large as his own.

‘Have they made an arrest?’ Fran asked. It had occurred to her that at least a second murder might have brought a fresh impetus to the investigation. Surely now Jimmy would have more idea what had happened.

‘I don’t think so,’ James said. ‘Jimmy couldn’t talk about the case. I understand that.’